Please contact your Representative in Congress and ask them to sponsor H.R. 2218,  The Parental Consent Act of 2009.

Here is a link to the bill text: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-2218

Here is a great article by Dr. John Breeding explaining the background of the bill and the Bush Administration’s “New Freedom Commission on Mental Health” which Dr. Breeding appropriately coins the “No Freedom” commission.

To take action against specific Orwellian psychiatric programs included in recent versions of the Federal Health legislation, see this link:

Senate Nixes Public Disclosure of Revised Health Care Language – Take Action.

For more background on some of the bills now coming up in Congress to fulfill the goals of the “Freedom Commission” see:

http://tinyurl.com/BillionsPsych

http://tinyurl.com/ykqy8e2

July 8, 2009 – Air America Radio

Ron Reagan interviews Russ Baker, author of “Family Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Secret History of the Last Fifty Years”

Listen (mp3)

37:43 | 8.63 MB | MP3

http://airamerica.com/ronreagan

YouTube

Writing

The Skeleton in W.’s Closet: An excerpt from Family of Secrets

Russ Baker – December 22, 2008

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russ-baker/the-skeleton-in-ws-closet_b_152869.html

Do you know the story behind the Kennedy Assassination, behind Watergate, behind George W. Bush’s quick ascension to the most powerful office in the world? I thought I did. It was pretty simple, really. Oswald killed Kennedy, Nixon was an ogre, and W triumphed through a combination of ruthless political tactics, the weakness of his opponent, timing, and dumb luck.

That’s what I thought–I and many others. Then I began to wonder about George W. What, really, underlay his improbable rise and the administration it spawned? When I considered the astonishing array of controversies and the deceit running throughout the enterprise, my instincts told me there was more to the story. Beginning in 2004, and for the next five years, I hit the road, interviewing hundreds of people (most of whom had never been interviewed before) and obtaining and examining thousands of documents.

The story led me to places – psychologically as well as physically – that I never expected to go. I had to reassess many of my most basic assumptions, not just about George W. Bush and his family; but even more about the nature of power in America and the way it has played out in our recent history. That includes some of the most persistently baffling events.

The result is my first book, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, The Powerful Forces That Put it in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America. For more information on this book and the research behind it, please visit www.familyofsecrets.com.

The following is an excerpt from the book.

Prescott Bush with Richard Nixon May 6, 1953

Even before George W. Bush attained his first public office, his handlers were aware of a skeleton rattling noisily in his closet. It was one that undercut the legend of principle and duty — the story of a man’s man and patriot. It would have to be disposed of.

At a televised debate in 1994 between incumbent Texas governor Ann Richards and challenger George W., Austin television reporter Jim Moore asked Bush to explain how he had gotten so quickly and easily into National Guard pilot training as an alternative to serving in Vietnam. Candidate Bush simply asserted that favoritism had played no role and that he had honorably served. End of discussion. There were no follow-up questions.

But the moment the debate was over, Bush’s communications director, Karen Hughes, came at the journalist. “Karen just makes a beeline for me and gets in my face and tries to separate me from the crowd,” Moore said. “Then she starts a rant. ‘What kind of question is that? Why did you ask that question? Who do you think you are? That’s just not relevant to being governor of Texas. He’s not trying to run the federal government. He’s going to run the state of Texas. What does his service in the National Guard have to do with anything? He doesn’t have an army to run here in Texas. Why would you ask such a question, Jim?’” (Some years later, when Bush actually was running an army, each time a reporter asked the same question, he or she was told that it had been “asked and answered” long ago.) In response to Hughes, Moore said, “It’s about character, Karen. It’s about his generation and mine coming of age, and how we dealt with what we all viewed as a bad war.”

As the reporter was turning to go file his story, Bush’s chief strategist, Karl Rove, came at him next. “‘What was that question, Moore?’ And I said, ‘Well, you know what it was, Karl.’ I said it’s a fair question. And he said, ‘It wasn’t fair. It doesn’t have anything to do with anything.’ And his rant was less energized than Karen’s, but it was the same thing — trying to say, ‘You’re stupid. You’re a yokel local and you’re stupid and you don’t know what you’re doing.’”

Bush’s handlers thought they could get reporters off a story by intimidating them. Often they turned out to be right. It sometimes seems that the entire story of George W. Bush’s life has been rewritten by hired hands. As each exaggeration, distortion, or factual error is uncovered, Bush has ducked and bobbed; only rarely has he been forced to concede anything.

Just one of hundreds of such examples: During his unsuccessful Midland congressional bid in 1978, W.’s campaign literature described his war time service as “Air Force” — a claim also made for him in Poppy’s autobiography. Presumably both men knew the difference between the National Guard and the Air Force. Nevertheless, that claim remained in W.’s official biography until the 2000 presidential campaign, at which point the correction was quietly made.

On no subject were Bush and his team more intransigent than on the particulars of his military ser vice. One cosmetic concern was that the favoritism shown young Bush in his National Guard assignment did not fit the legend Karl Rove was developing for him. This was the tough, no bullshit, “mano a mano” kind of guy, the cocky kid who challenged his famous father to a fight, the self-made oilman in flight jacket and cowboy boots, the straight-talking “ranch hand” with the John Wayne swagger (“in Texas, we call that walking”). Even the name of his campaign plane (Accountability One) was crafted to the image. He could not be seen as someone who used family connections to get a cushy home-front assignment while thousands of his peers went off to die in Vietnam.

After Bush’s election as governor in 1994, his political team worked to inoculate their man against further inquiries into his Guard service. Dan Bartlett, an eager staff aide then in his twenties, and with no military service of his own, was named as liaison between the governor and the National Guard. And Bush replaced Texas’s adjutant general Sam Turk, the administrative head of the Guard, who had been appointed by Governor Richards, with General Daniel James.

Cleaning up the Texas Guard records became a lot easier once W. was the titular commander in chief of the state’s National Guard units. The effort got under way just months after Bush’s inauguration. On May 16, 1995, Joe Allbaugh, by then Bush’s chief of staff, met with Guard officials and asked to see Bush’s personnel records. Three days later, they were sent over to the governor’s office from the office of the outgoing adjutant general. “I am enclosing copies of the Texas Air National Guard personnel records for Mr. Daniel O. Shelley and Governor George W. Bush,” wrote Turk. It is not clear why Shelley’s records were also requested, except that he was about to be named Bush’s legislative director. In any case, asking for two records rather than one likely was a form of cover — comparable to what happened in 1972 when George W. Bush failed to take his mandatory National Guard physical and was joined in this violation by his friend Jim Bath. In each instance, the special treatment accorded W. was made to seem more “routine” by the fact that at least one other person was included.

That the people around the governor were concerned was evident when Dan Bartlett traveled to Denver to personally review the microfiche copy of Bush’s records on file at the Air Reserve Personnel Center. Although Bartlett had little or no knowledge of the military, he would turn out to be a good man for the job. As was true of most Bush appointees, his primary qualification was loyalty. Bartlett had gone to work for Karl Rove’s political consulting business in 1992, right out of college, and so by the 2000 presidential campaign, his entire adult life had been in service to Rove and Bush.

In 1996, the new adjutant general, Daniel James, hired Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett, a former Guardsman and tough cattle rancher who doubled as a private management con sul tant, to lead a task force assessing the state of the organization. Even the top brass believed it had become lax and inefficient; Burkett’s mission was to create a strategic plan to bring the Guard back into fighting trim. Burkett returned several months later with a devastating report, documenting how outmoded, inefficient, unprepared, and even corrupt the service was. The report suggested sweeping reforms.

What Burkett and his team discovered went way beyond unjustified promotions of politically connected officers, as bad as those were. (One officer whose promotion was judged improper nevertheless went on to head a unit that was sent to Iraq in 2004.) They also uncovered that the Texas Guard rolls were full of “ghost soldiers,” military personnel kept on the books after they had left the unit to justify the continued flow of money allocated for their pay. Equally important, the ghost numbers made units appear to be at authorized troop levels when reviewed by state and federal authorities.

Burkett and his team believed their findings were so important and so sensitive that they had to take them straight to the top. Not knowing who was responsible for the fraud, “we decided we had to go to the boss,” Burkett recalled. But James, the man governor Bush had handpicked to run the Guard, seemed far more upset about the breach of military procedure in reporting the news of corruption and malfeasance than in the news itself. According to Burkett, James responded: “Now guys, I want to know what I’m supposed to tell the chief of staff, Colonel Goodwin, when he wants to have your heads ’cause you violated the chain of command and came in here over his head.”

When Burkett asked for — and received — a promise of funding from the Clinton-Gore administration to begin repairing holes in the Guard, Governor Bush angrily declined the help. According to Burkett, Bush’s chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, informed General James that henceforth his primary function was to ensure that Bill Burkett be kept as far as possible from the media.

Meanwhile, according to Burkett, there was discussion of Bush’s impending presidential bid and how it would become a priority for state officials. One day in 1997, Burkett said, he was in the vicinity of General James’s office when a call came in. James took it on the speakerphone. It was Joe Allbaugh, with Bush’s Guard liaison Dan Bartlett on the line. According to Burkett, Allbaugh told James that Karen Hughes and Bartlett would be coming out to Camp Mabry, which was on the outskirts of Austin, to comb through the records in preparation for a book on Bush, and he instructed the general to have the records prescreened. According to Burkett, Allbaugh said, “Just get rid of the embarrassments.”

About ten days after Allbaugh’s call, Burkett claims, he came upon Guard officials going through Bush’s records and observed a trash can nearby that included between twenty and forty pages of Bush’s military documents. Burkett had a few moments to see what they contained. Another Guard officer and friend of Burkett’s, George Conn, would later corroborate much of this story, but then withdraw confirmation while steadfastly maintaining that Burkett was an honorable and truthful man. Clearly, Conn was in a difficult position, working for the military on a civilian contract, while his wife served as head of the secretarial pool for a large law firm that was a leading bundler of campaign contributions to the Bush campaigns.

“I was there. I know what I saw in the trash. I know what actions I saw taking place,” Burkett told me during one of several lengthy conversations. One of the documents that has been missing from the released files, Burkett claims, is a “counseling statement” from a senior officer to Bush, explaining why he was grounded and the changes to his assignment, slot, and pay rate. Burkett told me he glimpsed Bush’s counseling statement at the top of the discard stack, but did not have time to read it through. “In a perfect world, I guess I should have just stepped up and grabbed the files and made a federal case of it all right there,” he said. “Looking back, I probably would have. It would have been simpler to have confronted the whole mess right then and there.”

Copyright © 2008 Russ Baker

The above is an excerpt from the book Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, The Powerful Forces That Put it in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America by Russ Baker (Published by Bloomsbury Press; December 2008; 978-1596915572). This excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

‘Former U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton traded jokes about life after the Oval Office and took turns defending each other as they shared a stage in Toronto on Friday to discuss global affairs.’

We’ve all heard conspiracy theories before… and dismissed them due to social, political and religious pressures concieved and perpetuated by those who are in control of power over the peoples of the world and wish to remain that way, unchallenged.

This 2 hour documentary video uncovers the secret adgenda and exposes those behind the Secret Plan for World Domination. The Illuminati are an integral piece of the puzzle and you will see how they have kept us in the dark and manipulated our lives and our inate thinking.

One example is the plan to reduce the world population by 70% through the elimination of  important nutrients from our daily diets. First affected will be those that are starving right now, then it will spread up the economic chain until the goal is met, that is, a world population of 500 million people. The final phase of this plan begins in December 2009.

Don’t belive it? Let’s look at how there financial plan is working out… Most people are in debt to the point where it can never be paid back. The United States as a whole is currently in this position and it’s getting worse with each passing day. The goal here is to transfer ownership of all private and real property to the “enlightened ones” through reposession and foreclosure… Sound familiar? Isn’t that where we are right now?.. On the verge of Bankrupty, as a nation and as a people. I mean, how long will it take to pay off 13 Trillion in debt? Anybody care to do the math?…. Guess what, the numbers will prove it can’t be done, not even in several lifetimes!

By Rand Clifford

2/14/09

Truth in our time has become so muddied, the first thing we need in any search for fundamental, unambiguous truth is a good working definition. Something to clutch as a certain cruciform against vampires…a touchstone to help us better navigate lies.

truth \’trüth\ n. : That which is true

Hhmmm….so precisely what is “true”?

Truth. Truth is true.

That Möbius strip leads nowhere. Could a better understanding of truth as an aide to our search for it be found by examining the opposite of truth—by examining untruth?

American life floods us with one particular very tried and true untruth: Everything our federal government tells us, either officially, or through mainstream corporate media. So, a reliable working definition of truth here could be: “Exactly what government does not tell”. Certainly they tell occasional superficial truths, but those always have tendrils merging into the massive and nearby body of deceit.

Let’s test drive the definition—not conventionally as one would with perhaps a list of lies, specific lies, that’d set us on another Möbius strip since ultimately it’s all the same, or has only one side, lies. No, let’s take a spin through authority, some entrenched establishment symbolism.

The Fed

What might evoke more bedrock images of federal government than the Federal Reserve (Fed), our central bank (which is not actually a bank, and has no reserves)? Simmering in its deep heritage of untruth…the Fed is in no way a part of the federal government, but is instead a private corporation. The Fed’s ultimate agenda orbits profit for a mostly foreign banking cartel. It is a private money making machine disguised as a part of “Government of the People, by the People and for the People”, creating “money” by simple data entry, then bleeding the people by loaning it to the government at interest. How in the name of government, in disgusting violation of the Constitution, did this happen? Rep. Ron Paul tells us. He introduced the Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act (HR 2755), in June 2007.

The Great Depression is a sinister example of the Fed’s untruth. One of their “duties” is to stabilize the money supply, but Sirens of personal accumulation dictate their “mission”. Leaked documents and defector testimony reveals their zeal over how many thousands of banks and farms they hoped to acquire for pennies on the dollar…. The Great Depression was a coup by the financial elite to seize more wealth for themselves at the expense of the working class—one of history’s more hideous refrains. Please note that before their coup of ‘29, these elite controlled only a majority of banks in the Northeast; afterward they dominated American capital from coast to coast. Ben Bernanke, the Fed’s current head, even admitted when squeezed: “Regarding the Great Depression. We did it. We’re sorry. We won’t do it again.”

Considering the Fed’s seamless legacy of untruth…one might suspect that they actually are doing it again—note how much of the current “bailout” money is being used for acquisition…banks swallowing other banks, trillions in debt passed to future taxpayers. Try explaining something like this to your child.

The Bushes

Shaking the Bushes is an unlikely way to flush out truth, but it seems a blue moon can make both Georges spontaneously stray into actual truth.. Is it a ploy to further confuse us, or merely a wrinkle in perception management?

One of George II’s most germane chucking of beans: “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

George I once told reporter Sarah McClendon that, “If the American people really knew what we had done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched.”

Then in 1992, when asked what Iran-Contra was really all about, George I replied that it was done for “…the continuous consolidation of money and power into higher, tighter and righter hands.”

Talk about hitting pay dirt! In that simple nonchalance of George I, the fundamental truth underlying the foundational untruth of not only the Fed, but the federal government, corporate mainstream media—and owners of all of the above—the financial elite, is revealed.

Yes, the government is owned by our nemesis, the financial elite. They own our free press, they own you…they own the world. The common good is as irrelevant to our owners as the future of humanity, and what they want is all they’ve ever wanted: more. Will we simply keep swallowing their effluent until the Republic is dead?

All we really need to know, something we’ve had our noses rubbed in a very long time, is that the government deals exclusively in untruth. If it ever mattered even a little, truth has been absolutely and permanently supplanted by perception management, which, when it comes to the people, is the government’s only genuine concern (in Bush jargon, one American = OFU, or “one fodder unit”). The people have been so incredibly dumbed-down chemically and socially and every possible way in between that in the breadlines and soup kitchens, major-league baseball will probably be the hottest topic…or the Superbowl, or Brittney and Brad and Jen or the latest Superhero movie….

Perpetual Sheep, Perpetual Slaughter

A very wise woman said, “You can lead sheep to enlightenment, but you can’t make them think.”

Evolution has given women special insight to survive in a world where men dominate physically, do most of the slaughtering, and blaze where humanity would be better off not going. So what has a majority of the slaughter throughout history been motivated by? “…the continuous consolidation of money and power into higher, tighter and righter hands.” If George I spoke only two truths in his whole wretched infliction upon us, that one rules.

“…the continuous consolidation of money and power into higher, tighter and righter hands” drove the fraudulent presidential installation of George II, twice. Same thing for 9/11…for the absolutely mind-defying War on Terror! Oil wars, shock-and-awe, wanton slaughter of millions. War on the Biosphere, Great Depression redux, American concentration camps for Americans, American troops deployed against Americans on American streets, false flag terror, martial law. Suspension of the Constitution, death of the Republic…. Inhumanity American “leadership” has inflicted on the rest of the world for over half a century is now coming home.

Why?

“…the continuous consolidation of money and power into higher, tighter and righter hands.”

That’s the foundational truth everything can be distilled down to, the bottom-line truth we’ve been looking for—and what an unlikely place to find it…what eerie irony. From the forked tongue of George I.

“…the continuous consolidation of money and power into higher, tighter and righter hands.”

It’s the driving force behind everything in Planning Central, the only thing that matters. And with the face of the beast exposed…if we still have time, will we ever muster the will—and especially find the leadership—to turn back toward the humane?

Rand Clifford is a writer living in Spokane, Washington, with his wife Mary Ann, and their Chesapeake Bay retriever, Mink.. Rand’s novels CASTLING, TIMING, VOICES OF VIRES, and PRIEST LAKE CATHEDRAL are published by StarChief Press: http://www.starchiefpress.com

Thomas Paine’s Corner wants to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to receive them, type “TPC subscription” in the subject line and send your email to willpowerful@hotmail.com

To further your sociopolitical education, strengthen your connection with the radical community, and deepen your participation in forming an egalitarian, just, ecological, non-speciesist and democratic society, visit the Transformative Studies Institute at http://transformativestudies.org/ and the Institute for Critical Animal Studies at http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/.

Disclaimer: Since the time of re-posting this article from the Prison Planet website, I have conducted much research into the hand sign and have discovered many interesting findings. I no longer agree with the article’s author, but keep this article here for archive purposes, since there is numerous incoming links and references.

After much thought, I conclude Michelle Obama did not intentionally or consciously form the hand gesture in the photograph that appears on the cover of Vogue magazine. I may have been quick to originally agree with this article, because I don’t agree with the majority of President Obama’s policies or those he has chosen to fill his cabinet-level positions in his Presidential administration.

After my own personal research, I’ve discovered the sign’s true origins. The origins of the hand sign are numerous, including appearances in Crete, Rome, and India. In some ancient Mediterrian cultures, it carried a vulgar connotation, while in Rome, it was used to greet returning soldiers in a respectful, positive way. In India, it was used by religious adherents to cast away demonic forces. It wasn’t until the 20th century that Anton LeVay began to use it negatively to promote his Satanic religion.

Please accept my apologies if you read this article and disagree with it.

Prison Planet
Friday, February 13, 2009

Michelle Obama flashes the ‘El Diablo’ hand signal on the cover of Vogue magazine.

Texe Marrs’ book Codex Magica contains dozens of pictures of members of the elite flashing similar hand signals on the cover of magazines and newspapers. Texe explains the significance of the signal in the article below.

——————————————

Also called Il Cornuto and Diabolicus, the employment by the elite of the hand sign of the horned devil can actually be tracked all the way back to Babylon. On the great wall of Babylon, adjacent to Ishtar’s Gate, was a mosaic image of a horned bull, representing the sun god. The horns were symbolic of the Babylonian god’s power over the hearts of men.

Later, in Imperial Rome, Caesar’s military legions and millions of common people worshipped the sun god, Mithras. Mithraic initiates were baptized in the blood of a horned bull, slain and sacrificed by temple priests.

The Knights Templar, predecessor to today Scottish Rite Freemasons, worshiped the grotesque horned goat god, Baphomet. It is believed that many Illuminists continue to sacrifice to this unspeakable deity to this very day.

Reportedly, the Illuminati take great delight in seeing the masses adopt their ancient symbol of satanic worship on such a vast scale. How easy it has been for the elite to persuade the stupid and gullible to enter into satanic bondage. In giving the El Diablo, that is exactly the message the giver is signalling the devil: “I’m yours forever, Satan, heart and soul I’m yours!”

I Love You, Devil?

The “El Diablo” hand sign often is con-fused with the deaf’s signing of the phrase, “I love you.” While at first this appears an odd resemblance, we register an “ahh, I get it!” emotion when we discover that the person who invented, or created, the hand sign system for the deaf, Helen Keller, was herself an occultist and Theosophist. Did Keller purposely design the deaf’s “I love you” sign to be such a remarkable imitation of the classic sign of Satan? Was Keller saying, basically, “I love you, Devil?”

Then, we have the confusion of the El Diablo hand sign with the University of Texas “hook ‘em horns” sign. Texas’ mascot is the longhorn cow and it is only natural that the horns sign be employed by the student body, alumni, and fans of that great institution.

When Jenna Bush, the daughter of President George W. Bush, gave the horns sign at the 2004 presidential inauguration, it shocked the world. Most viewers of international TV did not know that Jenna is a recent graduate of the University of Texas. However, at that same inaugural gala, the President also was photographed giving the sign, and so was the other Bush daughter. Not only that, but the First Lady, Laura, and even the President’s mother, Barbara Bush, got into the mix. They, too, were seen giving the sign.

However, the inauguration of President George W. Bush was not the first which had featured the giving of the El Diablo sign. President Bill Clinton also did it at his first inaugural, and, in Codex Magica, you’ll see a shocking example of the El Diablo sign of Satan given at the inauguration of George Washington, our nation’s very first President!

Partying, Drinking, Rebellion, Or…?

With the rapid rise in popularity of the El Diablo sign among rock music fans, many people seem to be blissfully unaware of the satanic background and dark history of this sign. To some, giving the sign more likely indicates eagerness and gusto for fun, partying, drinking, and rebellion.

I leave it to you, the reader, to decide which of the persons shown here and in my book, Codex Magica, rendering the El Diablo sign, are paying homage to Satan and which are employing it for some other purpose. I have my own opinion, what’s yours? For example, in Codex Magica you’ll discover former President Bill Clinton, entertainer Michael Jackson, and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi all giving the sign. Are they telling us they are Texas Longhorns fans..or that they love Satan?

Actress Meryl Streep gives the sign of the Devil just over the head of “Angels in America” director, Mike Nichols. In 2004, the HBO series “Angels in America” was aired. It was possibly the most evil TV program ever broadcast. The director and actress were given “Golden Globe” awards, indicating how hateful Hollywood and the TV networks have become. The series depicted angels having sex with homosexuals and blasphemously mocked God. It praised communist spies like Ethel Rosenberg. (Photo: Newsweek, November 17, 2003) Entertainer Michael Jackson sends a message to his fans. Watch Those Hands! Actor Jason Alexander (”George” in Seinfeld TV series) performs a cabala ritual in plain sight of a vast audience. To the uninitiated and ignorant millions of people who read TV Guide and see this cover, Jason Alexander appears to be merely hamming it up. Little do they know of the deeper occult meaning. For example, we find Jason’s left and right hands giving the “El Diablo” satanic hand sign. His arms—one pointing up, the other down—indicate the dualistic (marriage of opposites, or reconciliation), cabalistic magical philosophy “As Above, So Below” (The devil goat Baphomet performs the same sign). We also note the three triangles presented by Jason’s legs and arms.

Judging the Evidence

A final word: Even if you and I are willing to allow that the giving of this sign by some is not intentionally satanic, we cannot dismiss the evidence that many, if not most, who employ the sign are, in fact, knowingly honoring Satan, the rebellious dark angel. The case of the vampire satanists who stabbed a victim 66 times and drank his blood undeniably stamps the El Diablo hand sign given by the murderers as intensely satanic in nature.

Neither can the pictures in Codex Magica of a Hindu sect member, a witch, and of Anton LaVey, High Priest of Satan, giving the sign be disputed or explained away.

As for top-ranked Christian evangelists pictured in Codex Magica giving what appears to be the El Diablo sign, are these men servants of the One, True God as revealed in the Holy Bible, or do they cryptically serve His adversary, Lucifer? Judging from their hand gestures, what do you say?

(Source: Prison Planet)

By Karrie Gillett

FABRIC made in Scotland has been flown to America to be used for curtains in President Obama’s bedroom.

The pure wool cloth produced by a Perthshire company has been ordered to make up all the curtains for the Obama private quarters in the White House.

America’s First Lady Michelle Obama enlisted the services of a US-based interior designer who placed the huge fabric order with Macnaughton Holdings in Perth.

And staff at the firm’s weaving depot in Keith, Morayshire, was told who their famous client was just ten days before Barack’s inauguration.

Now, the order has been completed in less than four weeks and is on its way to Washington to hang in the private rooms of America’s top family.

Blair Macnaughton, managing director, said all 82 workers were incredibly proud of helping out their most powerful customer.

Mr Macnaughton said: “The United States represents a huge market for us with Americans loving the quality fabric which is 100 per cent Scottish.

“But when we were told we would be working for the most powerful man in the world we were understandably pretty chuffed.

“It is a really nice thought to know that our fabric is going to be used in the Obamas’ own rooms.

“The whole thing has given all the staff a really good boost to morale.”

The textile company has been designing interior fabrics and kilts since 1783 and Blair, 55, is the seventh generation boss.

The firm was contacted by interior designer to the stars Michael Smith who was hired to help revamp the family home in the White House vacated by the Bush clan.

Smith, a California-based designer, has a list of celebrity clients including Steven Spielberg, Dustin Hoffman and supermodel Cindy Crawford.

The order for the ecru stripe Scots fabric was placed just before Obama took up office when wife Michelle decided the White House needed a more “family-friendly feel”.

Mr MacNaughton said: “It really is a fantastic contract for us to get – we have the most powerful man in the world looking at our fabric every day.

“The cloth was made in Scotland with love and care and we’re sure President Obama will be very pleased with it.”

Russ Baker, AlterNet. Posted January 22, 2009.

As George W. Bush leaves office and Barack Obama takes over, we are in danger of missing the opportunity for change our new president has promised — unless we come to grips with what the great historian and Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin called our “hidden history,” not just of the past eight years but of the past half-century and more. 

President Obama will face a staggering array of challenges, most, if not all, of which stem from the policies of Bush. But efforts at reform will fall short if we fail to probe and confront the powerful forces that wanted this disastrous administration in the White House in the first place — and that remain ready and able to maintain their influence behind the scenes today.

Like most people, I took the failings of George W. Bush at face value: an inattentive, poorly prepared man full of hubris, who committed colossal blunders as a result. Then I spent five years researching my new book, Family of Secrets and came to see that the origins go much deeper. This backstory is getting almost no attention in the talking-heads debate over the Bush legacy. Yet it will continue to play, affecting our country and our lives, long after Bush leaves office.

A more profound explanation for the rise of George W. Bush came as I studied the concerted effort  to convince the public that he was  independent of, and often in disagreement with, his father. The reason for this, it turned out, was that exactly the opposite was true. W. may have been bumptious where his father was discreet, but in fact the son hewed closely to a playbook that guided his father and even his grandfather.

Over much of the last century, the Bushes have been serving the aims of a very narrow segment from within America’s wealthiest interests and families — typically through involvement in the most anti-New Deal investment banking circles, in the creation of a civilian intelligence service after World War II, and in some of that service’s most secretive and still-unacknowledged operations.

Through declassified documents and interviews, I unearthed evidence that George W. Bush’s father, the 41st president of the United States, had been working for the intelligence services no less than two decades before he was named CIA director in 1976. Time and again, Bush 41 and his allies have participated in clandestine operations to force presidents to do the bidding of oil and other resource-extraction interests, military contractors and financiers. Whenever a president showed  independence or sought reforms that threatened entrenched interests, this group helped to ensure that he was politically attacked and neutralized, or even removed from office, through one means or another.

We are not dealing here with what are commonly dismissed as “conspiracy theories.”  We are dealing with a reality that is much more subtle, layered and pervasive — a matrix of power in which crude conspiracies are rarely necessary and in which the execution or subsequent cover-up of anti-democratic acts become practically a norm.

In 1953, 23 years before he became CIA director as a supposed neophyte, George H.W. Bush began preparing to launch an oil-exploration company called Zapata Offshore. His father, investment banker Prescott Bush, had just taken a Senate seat from Connecticut; and his father’s close friend Allen Dulles had just taken over the CIA. A staff CIA officer, Thomas J. Devine, purportedly “resigned” to go into the oil business with young George.

Bush then began to travel around the world. His itineraries had little apparent relationship to his limited and perennially unprofitable business enterprises.  But they do make sense if the object was intelligence work. When his company at last  put a few oil rigs in place, they ended up in highly sensitive spots, such as just off Castro’s Cuba before the Bay of Pigs invasion.

As part of his travels, Bush senior even appeared in Dallas on the morning of the Kennedy assassination, although he would famously claim that he could not recall where he was at that historic moment. After leaving the city, he called the FBI with a false tip about a possible assassin, pointedly emphasizing that he was calling from outside Dallas. It is also intriguing to learn that an old friend of Bush’s, a White Russian émigré with intelligence connections, shepherded Lee Harvey Oswald upon his return to America in the year preceding the assassination. In any event, when Lyndon Johnson replaced Kennedy, the oilmen and the intelligence-military establishment once again had a friend in the White House.

The pattern continued. New evidence suggests that Bush senior and his associates in the intelligence services, far from being the loyalists to Richard Nixon they claimed to be, had turned on the 35th president early in his administration, unceasingly working to weaken and eventually force him out. These efforts culminated in what appears to have been a deliberately botched Watergate office burglary — led by former CIA officers.

Ironically, Nixon’s career had been launched with the quiet backing of Wall Street finance figures upset with the man Nixon would defeat, a leading congressional supporter of banking reform, and Prescott Bush himself had played a key role. Yet, when Nixon finally achieved the presidency, he became surprisingly resistant to pressure from the very power centers that had helped him get to the top. He turned a deaf ear to the demands of the oil industry,  battled with the CIA and cut the Pentagon out of the loop as he (and his aide Henry Kissinger) negotiated secretly with Moscow and Beijing.

These acts estranged Nixon from those who felt he had betrayed his sponsors — men who had the means to do him in. Bush senior, it turns out, was closely allied with the surprising number of White House officials with covert ties to the intelligence service that surrounded Nixon. Through it all, Bush senior would routinely claim to be “out of the loop,” as he would later pretend during the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan era, although we know that as vice president he was at the center of that and other abuses of power.

None of this let up after Nixon was forced to resign. His pliant successor, Gerald Ford, brought in young staffers named Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and the two participated in the so-called Halloween massacre, which saw the administration veer in a far-right direction on foreign policy, a development that paved the way for the appointment of Bush senior as CIA director. This happened just as Congress was launched into the deepest investigation ever of intelligence abuses, and public voices were clamoring to reopen official inquiries into the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, his brother, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

Then came Jimmy Carter, whose plans to reform the CIA were an echo of JFK’s intent to scatter the CIA to the winds after the ruinous Bay of Pigs invasion.  When Carter defeated Ford, ousted Bush from the CIA helm and sought to bring the intelligence juggernaut under control, he ended up deeply compromised by complex financial shenanigans orchestrated by figures from the same  intelligence circles — and undermined by the crisis with Iran, exacerbated by covert dissident CIA elements tied to Bush. Carter was a one-term president, defeated by a ticket with none other than George H.W. Bush, backed by a phalanx of CIA officers, as vice president. And then Bush senior became president himself.  

Bill Clinton apparently grasped the pattern. He cultivated a friendly relationship with the elder Bush and instituted virtually no significant reforms in, or issued challenges to, either the intelligence or military establishments.

All this is relevant today because the furtive forces and pressures that haunted, and ultimately dominated, these past presidents have not abated.

Indeed, what the presidency of George W. Bush truly represented was the unfettered, most reckless manifestation of the objectives this group has pursued for many decades. In Bush 43’s trademark pattern of showing the old man how it’s done, the son was bringing virtually into the open the kinds of things his father preferred pursued sub-rosa. But behind the different façade it was the same game all over again.

The dirty tricks of Karl Rove, who got his first job under Bush 41 at the Republican Party during Watergate; the use of the Supreme Court to force an election their way; an early move to suppress the records of prior presidencies; the maniacal secrecy of Vice President Cheney; the false rationale used to justify the seizure of Iraqi oil reserves through invasion; the clampdown on dissent and the unauthorized domestic eavesdropping, the efforts to smear independent voices like Joseph Wilson (the husband of  CIA officer Valerie Plame) and newsman Dan Rather; and last and perhaps most significant, the unleashing from government oversight of their friends and allies in finance and industry — these and more emerged from the old dreams and methods of this anti-democratic culture. 

Now, as a new president enters the White House promising reform, how much will he be able to achieve if his reforms step on the same big toes? We must begin to take seriously, and speak openly about, the true nature of the forces behind the Bush family enterprise. If we do not, we will find ourselves, several years from now, shaking our heads at new disaster, still unable to comprehend what has happened — and why.

Russ Baker is an award-winning investigative reporter. He has written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Nation, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice and Esquire. Baker received a 2005 Deadline Club award for his exclusive reporting on George W. Bush’s military record. Information on his new book, Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America, can be found at www.familyofsecrets.com.

The Bush family (photo: www.stillman.org)

Frederick Clarkson
January 4, 2009

www.religiondispatches.org

Below is an addendum to today’s feature “New Book Reveals How Faith is Like a Covert Operation for the Bush Family”. The book discussed is Russ Baker’s: Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces that Put it in the White House, and what Their Influence Means for America (Bloomsbury Press, 2008)

Baker has unearthed many startling facts about the careers of Bush 41 and Bush 43. He also draws some head turning conclusions about some of the key figures in both the Watergate scandal and the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the relationship of Poppy Bush to both events. But before we summarize some of the book’s major disclosures, it is worth discussing the elephant in the room (For a full analysis of the revelations regarding the religious life of the Bushes, see today’s feature: ).

Investigative works are often labeled “conspiracy theories.” This term is generally used to suggest that whatever an author has learned, he or she may be a bit unhinged, and we may therefore not take the material seriously. And we are safe to go about our business as usual. While there are people and work, no matter how well intentioned to which the label might fairly apply, the label is also used by many of us to dismiss information and analyses that make us uncomfortable even when they legitimately push the boundaries of our understanding of modern politics, business and government. But as we address our own discomfort in the face of such material, we need to remind ourselves that investigative journalism discomfits the author as well. Journalists like Baker are constantly checking and cross checking, making sure that disturbing information is in fact so. Even more awkward are the disturbing questions that the journalist cannot answer, but are themselves so well founded that they must be raised. Conspiracy theorists tend to take the opposite tack. Information is shaped or interpreted to conform to predetermined and often fevered conclusions, while countervailing information is downplayed or ignored.

Baker is a well-respected journalist who has written for major newspapers and magazines and has served as a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. His effort to understand the lives of the presidents Bush unexpectedly led him to reexamine Watergate and the Kennedy assassination and other murky episodes of recent American history, “documenting the secrets that the House of Bush has long sought to obscure.”

“I’ll admit it,” Baker writes in his conclusion. “Fear of being so labeled has haunted me throughout this work. It’s been an internal censor that I’ve had to resist again and again. And also an external one, as friends within the journalistic establishment reviewed my findings, found them both credible and highly disturbing, and yet urged me to stay away from them for my own good. I began to realize that I was experiencing the very thing the process is designed to induce. The boundaries of permissible thought are staked out and enforced. We accept the conventional narratives because they are repeated and approved, while conflicting ones are scorned. Isn’t this how authoritarian regimes work? They get inside your mind so that overt repression becomes less necessary.”

“Whose interests does this serve?” he continues. “As this book demonstrates, the deck has long been and continues to be, stacked on behalf of big money players, especially those in commodities and natural resources *from gold to oil *and those who finance the extraction of these materials. The defense industry, and the aligned growth of business of “intelligence,” provide muscle. On a lower level is an army of enablers*the campaign functionaries, the PR people, the lawyers. This was the Bush enterprise. The Bushes embodied it as a dynasty, but it is larger than them, and will prove more enduring.”

Here are some of the major revelations of the book:

*George H. W. (“Poppy”) Bush, and many of his closest associates throughout his adult life were deeply and secretly enmeshed in covert intelligence activities. He has gone to great lengths to conceal many of his activities, no matter how mundane, and engaged in overt acts of misdirection. Bush’s extensive intelligence ties prior to his becoming CIA Director in the Ford administration, and going back to World War II, have not been previously reported. Baker calls this Bush’s “double life.”

*Poppy Bush was deeply involved with an array of CIA covert operators, Bay of Pigs veterans and rightwing Texas oil industry characters linked to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Baker shows that Bush was actually in Dallas on November 21, 1963 and was probably there on the day of the assassination as well. Baker draws no particular conclusions from the fact, except to document, describe and underscore the great lengths he went to conceal the fact.

*Baker asserts that, much to his own surprise, Richard Nixon while no innocent, was not the instigator of the Watergate crimes and the cover-up, but appears to have been set-up. What’s more, some of the seeming good guys, were not, and much of what seemed to be, was not as it seemed. Among those he implicates in the set-up are Poppy Bush and perhaps most remarkably, John Dean, the former White House counsel who became best known as the key whistleblower.

*In a related point, Baker notes that Nixon suspected the CIA of infiltrating his White House staff. Nixon recognized the Watergate burglars from his own days supervising covert operations as Vice President in the Eisenhower administration, and knew that their bosses were seasoned CIA hardliners with ties to the Bay of Pigs invasion and events linked to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Nixon battled the CIA for files on what he called the “Bay of Pigs thing,” but never could get access to them. (To borrow from Woody Allen, just because Nixon was paranoid, doesn’t mean they were not out to get him.)

*Baker questions the integrity and independence of famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward of the Washington Post who he reports had been recommended for his job by senior Nixon White House officials who had known him when he worked in Naval intelligence prior to his becoming a reporter. In that capacity, which Woodward denies he held, he was a frequent visitor to the White House.

*Baker details the Bush family’s personal, political and business connections to the Saudi royal family; and to apparent international slush funds and money laundering schemes. Much of this is told in such a matter of fact fashion that it is easy to lose sight of the significance of many of the individual facts.

Regarding George W. Bush, in addition to the manufacture of the legend his conversion story (see main story) the book covers familiar turf regarding how strings were pulled to get George W. Bush into the “Champagne Unit” of the Texas Air National Guard in order to avoid military service that might send him to Vietnam; how he failed to fulfill that service; and how his failure was systematically covered-up and politically defused. Also covered are the allegations of how W. was an abuser of illegal drugs in addition to his apparently drinking problems as a young man.

One important story from W.’s past that has long been rumored is confirmed in this book. It is a story that perhaps as much as his going AWOL from the National Guard and orchestrating a cover-up could have derailed his political career.

And that story is the illegal abortion he obtained for a girlfriend in Texas before Roe v. Wade. This is substantiated in part by four reporters whose stories were not published, but who shared their “experiences and detailed source notes” and even tapes with him. Two Bush pals took charge of arranging the abortion go to the hospital and who went to the hospital to inform her that he would not see her again. All of the names are named. Certainly as an candidate who was seeking to appeal to conservative evangelical, anti-abortion constituencies, this would have been a high hurdle to overcome.

“As president,” Baker concludes, “Bush promulgated tough new policies that withheld U.S. funds not only to programs and countries that permitted abortions, but even to those that advocated contraception as opposed to abstinence. Moreover, his appointments to the Supreme Court put the panel on the verge of reversing Roe v. Wade. Like his insistence on long prison sentences for first time drug offenders and his support for military action, his own behavior in regard to sexual responsibility and abortion could be considered relevant *and revealing.” Such journalistic understatement is typical of Baker’s narrative, even while reporting potentially politically explosive material.

Perhaps the revelation that would be most difficult for readers will not be anything about the Bush family, or Watergate or the Kennedy assassination, or any of the figures in this nearly 500 page book and 1000-plus footnotes. “These revelations about the Bushes,” Baker writes, “lead in turn to an even more disturbing truth about the country itself. It’s not just that such a clan could occupy the presidency or vice presidency for twenty of the past twenty-eight years and remain essentially unknown. It’s that the methods of stealth and manipulation that powered their rise reflect a deeper ill: the American public’s increasingly tenuous hold upon the levers of its own democracy.”

There has been talk of Caroline of the Kennedy clan becoming the Senator for New York once Hillary Clinton assumes her coronation as Secretary of State.

Personally, I think that it is high time that we Americans do away with the political dynasty’s that we have collard ourselves with. The Clinton’s, Daley’s , Bush’s, and the Kennedy’s all come to mind.

I find it difficult to see any people as being truly free when they basically enthrone families in positions of power seemingly forever. No, I don’t have anything against the woman. I’m just getting pretty tired of seeing the same families controlling this nations destiny.

The following was originally published in Z magazine Online, May 2004 Volume 17 Number 5:

“Big Pharma

Eli Lilly, Zyprexa, & the Bush Family
The diseasing of our malaise

By Bruce Levine

More than one journalist has uncovered corrupt connections between the Bush Family, psychiatry, and Eli Lilly & Company, the giant pharmaceutical corporation. While previous Lillygates have been more colorful, Lilly’s soaking state Medicaid programs with Zyprexa—its blockbuster, antipsychotic drug—may pack the greatest financial wallop. Worldwide in 2003, Zyprexa grossed $4.28 billion, accounting for slightly more than one-third of Lilly’s total sales. In the United States in 2003, Zyprexa grossed $2.63 billion, 70 percent of that attributable to government agencies, mostly Medicaid.

Historically, the exposure of any single Lilly machination—though sometimes disrupting it—has not weakened the Bush-psychiatry-Lilly relationship. In the last decade, some of the more widely reported Eli Lilly intrigues include:

• Influencing the Homeland Security Act to protect itself from lawsuits
• Accessing confidential patient records for a Prozac sample mailing
• Rigging the Wesbecker Prozac-violence trial

A sample of those who have been on the Eli Lilly payroll includes:

• Former President George Herbert Walker Bush (one-time member of the Eli Lilly board of directors)
• Former CEO of Enron, Ken Lay (one-time member of the Eli Lilly board of directors)
• George W. Bush’s former director of Management and Budget, Mitch Daniels (a former Eli Lilly vice president)
• George W. Bush’s Homeland Security Advisory Council member, Sidney Taurel (current CEO of Eli Lilly)
• The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (a recipient of Eli Lilly funding)

In 2002, British and Japanese regulatory agencies warned that Zyprexa may be linked to diabetes, but even after the FDA issued a similar warning in 2003, Lilly’s Zyprexa train was not derailed, as Zyprexa posted a 16 percent gain over 2002. The growth of Zyprexa has become especially vital to Lilly because Prozac—Lilly’s best-known product, which once annually grossed over $2 billion—having lost its patent protection, continues its rapid decline, down to $645.1 million in 2003.

At the same time regulatory agencies were warning of Zyprexa’s possible linkage to diabetes, Lilly’s second most lucrative product line was its diabetes treatment drugs (including Actos, Humulin, and Humalog), which collectively grossed $2.51 billion in 2003. Lilly’s profits on diabetes drugs and the possible linkage between diabetes and Zyprexa is not, however, the most recent Lillygate that Gardiner Harris broke about Zyprexa in the New York Times on December 18, 2003.

Zyprexa costs approximately twice as much as similar drugs and Harris reported that state Medicaid programs—going in the red in part because of Zyprexa— are attempting to exclude it in favor of similar, less expensive drugs. Harris focused on the Kentucky Medicaid program, which had a $230 million deficit in 2002, with Zyprexa being its single largest drug expense at $36 million. When Kentucky’s Medicaid program attempted to exclude it from its list of preferred medications, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) fought back. The nonprofit NAMI—ostensibly a consumer organization—bused protesters to hearings, placed full-page ads in newspapers, and sent faxes to state officials. What NAMI did not say at the time was that the buses, ads, and faxes were paid for by Eli Lilly.

http://www.counterpunch.org/pringle03152005.html

Weekend Edition
March 12 / 13, 2005
Why Not Jeb and W.’s Kids First?
Labeling Kids Mentally Ill for Profit

By EVELYN PRINGLE

Citing recommendations by the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (NFC), Bush wants to launch a nationwide mental illness screening program in government institutions, including the public school system, for all students from kindergarten up to the 12th grade.

The New Freedom Commission was established by an Executive Order Bush issued on April 29, 2002. According to a July 22, 2003, press release, the Commission recommends transforming America’s mental health care system.

ìAchieving this goal will require greater engagement and education of first line health care providers – primary care practitioners – and a greater focus on mental health care in institutions such as schools, child welfare programs, and the criminal and juvenile justice systems. The goal is integrated care that can screen, identify, and respond to problems early,î the Commission’s press release stated.

According to the NFC, its recommendations are being already being promoted in Alaska; Arizona; Arkansas; California; Colorado; Connecticut; Delaware; Florida; Georgia; Hawaii; Idaho; Illinois; Indiana; Kansas; Kentucky; Louisiana; Maryland; Massachusetts; Michigan; Montana; Nebraska; New Hampshire; New Jersey; New Mexico; New York; North Carolina; North Dakota; Ohio; Oklahoma; South Carolina; Tennessee; Texas; Utah; Virginia; Washington; West Virginia; Wisconsin; and Wyoming.

The truth is, this is nothing but another Bush profiteering scheme to implement a drug treatment program for use in the public institutions that will generate high volume sales of the relatively new, but inadequately tested, high-priced psychiatric drugs. If all goes as planned, the scheme will generate millions of new customers for the drug companies.

Original Scheme Hatched In Texas

The commission’s final report identifies what it claims are several model programs as examples of how aspects of mental health care have been transformed in selected communities.

One program is the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP), a medication treatment program that screens people for mental illness and then prescribes highly profitably psychiatric drugs.

However, the plan came under intense scrutiny when it was implemented in the state of Pennsylvania. A whistle-blower by the name of Allen Jones,* who was an employee of the Pennsylvania office of Inspector General, published a report that described how medical leaders in Pennsylvania who controlled the medication plan, received payments from the drug companies who were going to benefit from the plan.

Through the Texas scheme, drug companies were able to gain unlimited access to the Texas prison system, juvenile justice system, foster care program, and state mental health hospitals, to recruit new customers.

In Texas, the list of medications to be prescribed was established by what was termed, an ìexpert consensus,î and drugs recommended for first line treatment, included high-priced drugs such as Paxil, Zyprexa, Adderall, Zoloft, Risperdal, Seroqual, Depakote, Prozac, Wellbutron, Zyban, Remeron, Serzone, and Effexor.

After securing access to the public systems, the next step in the Texas scheme was to get lawmakers to pass legislation to increase Medicaid coverage to persons who ordinarily would not qualify, in order to provide funding by way of tax dollars to pay for the drugs prescribed to customers within theses systems.

The fact is, our children are already being overmedicated. According to a May, 2003 report by the New York Times, “National sales of anti-psychotics reached $6.4 billion in 2002, making them the fourth-highest-selling class of drugs, behind cholesterol-lowering drugs, ulcer drugs and antidepressants.î

The number of children on antidepressant medication increased by over 500% between 1999 and 2003. Antidepressants and anti-psychotics now constitute two of the four top classes of drug sales.

For example, Zyprexa is manufactured by Eli Lilly and is one of the drugs on the list in Texas. In 2002, according to the watchdog group, NDC Health, “more than 7.4 million prescriptions were written for Zyprexa.”

In 2003, it became Eli Lilly’s top seller with worldwide sales of over $4 billion. According to the New York Times, 70% of the Zyprexa purchased in the US that year, was paid for by government programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

Eli Lilly has well-known ties to the Bush administration. After he left the CIA in 1977, Bush Senior became a member of Lilly’s board of directors. When he left the company to become Vice President under Reagan in 1980, he forgot to mention that he owned stock in the company at the same time that he was lobbying for tax breaks for the company even though it manufactured drugs in Puerto Rico. Bush Junior made Eli Lilly CEO, Sidney Taurel, a member of the Homeland Security Council.

During the 2000 presidential election year, Lilly gave over $1.5 million to political candidates and over 80% that $1.5 million went to Bush and other Republican candidates.

Many members of the New Freedom Commission also have ties to the pharmaceutical industry and have served on drug company advisory boards.

What’s In Store For Us

The NFC appointed 15 subcommittees to review of the mental health service delivery system and appointed a Chair for each one. Several other Commissioners served on each subcommittee, and chose experts to provide advice and support. The experts prepared discussion papers that outlined key issues and presented policy options for consideration by the full subcommittee. The subcommittee reported to the full Commission only in summary form, on which the full Commission reached a consensus on the policy options that would be included in its final report entitled, ìAchieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America.î

A February 5, 2003, summary report by the Policy Options Subcommittee on Medicaid, began by stating, ìAn effective and comprehensive mental health system must rely on many sources of financing. Many States have made significant use of flexibility in the Medicaid program to support their systems of care. This has resulted in Medicaid being the largest payer of public mental health services in the country.î

The report outlined the following recommendations:

Enhance Service Delivery

1. Public financing should support evidenced-based practices that are necessary and effective for successful community living.

2. Medicaid financial incentives and opportunities for the most appropriate community-based care should be increased.

Enhance Service Planning and Coordination

1.Federal leadership should guide and facilitate improved planning among State agencies that fund and implement services for persons with mental illness.

2. The federal government should assure proper data collection and reporting to facilitate and support mental health planning and quality management at all levels of the public mental health system.

One February 5, 2003, report by a subcommittee titled, Promoting, Preserving and Restoring Children’s Mental Heath, began in part, by saying, ìMental health problems among children and adolescents constitute a public health crisis for our nation. … The extent, severity, and far-reaching consequences of mental health problems in children and adolescents make it imperative that our nation adopt a comprehensive, systematic, public health approach to improving the mental health status of children,î the report said.

The approach, the report advised, should focus on ìboth strengthening services and supports for children with serious emotional disorders and their families, and on prevention and early intervention strategies for all children.î

The subcommittee wanted the Federal and State governments to formulate a plan to (1) implement a cross-agency, comprehensive, public health approach for children’s mental health at Federal and State levels; (2) strengthen children’s mental health focus in State governments; and (3) establish a Federal interagency entity for children’s mental health.

As for funding, the subcommittee said: ìFederal and state agencies and commercial insurers should realign funding policies related to children’s mental health to support a comprehensive array of services and supports, including home and community based services and supports that are individualized, family focused, coordinated, and culturally competent.î

The subcommittee specified that a plan should be developed for Medicaid to support home and community-based services and support and individualized care, and maximize strategies to provide coverage and mental health care to uninsured children.

In addition, the subcommittee wanted the government to provide technical assistance related to more efficient and effective implementation of early and periodic screening, diagnosis, and treatment (EPSDT).

Here’s good one. The subcommittee we should strengthen Federal and State requirements for family participation. ìFederal and state governments should promote a broader concept of ìmental healthî services for children and adolescents with emotional disorders and their families,î it advised.

ìRecognizing that children receive more services through schools than any other public system,î the report recommended that ìfederal, state, and local agencies should more fully recognize and address the mental health needs of youth in the education system,î it advised. ìLikewise, these agencies should work collaboratively with families and develop, evaluate, and disseminate effective approaches for providing mental health services and supports to youth in schools,î it wrote.

The subcommittee recommended training teachers and school personnel to recognize signs of emotional problems in children and to make appropriate referrals for assessment and services. ìSystematic screening procedures to identify … problems and treatment needs should be implemented in specific settings in which youngsters are at high risk for emotional disorders or where there is known to be a high prevalence of these or co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders,î according to the report.

And get this! Anyone involved in the juvenile justice system or welfare system is really in for trouble. ìScreening should be implemented upon entry into, and periodically thereafter in, the juvenile justice and child welfare systems, as well as in other settings and populations with known high risk, such as the Medicaid population. When mental health problems are identified, youth should be linked with appropriate services and supports,î the report advised.

This gang of thugs is even coming up with ways to make money off infants shortly after they enter the world. This particular report recommends screening for all children ages 0 to 5 for social and emotional development as part of primary health care visits.

Mega-Bucks For Shrinks

Dr Jane Orient, the Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) has a few things to say about this latest profiteering scheme. “Teams of experts are awaiting an infusion of cash,î she says, ìThey’ll be ensconced in your child’s school before you even know it.î

Orient says an added ìbonus is that your little darlings will probably give them quite a bit of information about you also, and then you can receive therapy you didn’t know you needed.”

According to Orient, kids will be asked invasive personal questions like whether their parents raise their voice, or ìEver spank them? Have politically incorrect attitudes? Use forbidden words? Own a gun? Smoke cigarettes, especially indoors? Read extremist literature? Refuse to recycle? Prepare for a knock at the door.”

The answers to these questions could lead to a home visit with parents, and accusations of “poor parenting skills, inadequate housekeeping, harmful literature, or a baby who is crying. …,” Orient warns.

She lists the many tools at the disposal of what she calls “the mental health squad,” including “Counseling sessions. Drugs. Group therapy. Removing the child from the home.” Although removing a child from the home is listed as a last resort, the mere threat of it “can accomplish wonders,” Orient noted.

According to the he University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Student Health Center, privacy rights are essentially being ignored. The center is telling patients that if government agencies want to see their medical records, they get to review them without a patient’s knowledge or consent. “By law we cannot reveal when we have disclosed such information to the government,” the center advised.

Screen Those In Dire Need First

If you want to see mental illness, just go knock on the door of the White House, or the Bushës home in Crawford, Texas. I recommend that we start this mandatory screening program with the Bush family.

Lets find some treatment for their deep-seeded mental health problems. For instance, what rotten things happened in the Bush home that drove the twins to start drinking excessively while under age. And what emotional problems caused them to intentionally embarrass their father in a matter of months after he took office.

Then lets screen the President’s nieces and nephews to see why Jeb’s kids find it appropriate to forge prescriptions for drugs, and why his son would engage in underage sex in a car parked in a public shopping center lot. Or why Jeb’s wife would try to smuggle in goods from other countries without paying the fees.

Then lets move on to brother Neil and have him screened to find out what compelled him to have sex with strange women who showed up at his motel room door in foreign countries, which resulted in a case of incurable VD. And let’s find out what possessed him to have an affair with his mother’s secretary while both parties were still very married..

Next, let’s line up members of the Bush administration and find out what compulsions need eradicating. Then let’s continue on to the officials at the FDA and figure out what happened to their consciences, which allow them to promote medicating kids for profits.

Granted, the “New Freedom Commission” is a catchy title. However, words can be very deceptive. I fail to see how forcing people to undergo mental health testing can possibly represent freedom, or how drugging people for profit can hardly be viewed as a form of freedom.

I agree with an article I read on NewsTarget.com that said, ìthese people have lost their minds in a mad attempt to generate obscene profits regardless of the cost to human life, individual privacy, and human rights.î

Evelyn Pringle lives in Miamisburg Ohio. She can be reached at:e.pringle@sbcglobal.net

* To the millions of doctors, parents and patients who will be affected, Allen Jones says educate yourselves. The Internet has many sites that will help you. The Alliance for Human Research Protection, www.ahrp.org would be a good place to start.